Friday, February 08, 2008

ALLAN DE GENOVA SHOULD RESIGN PARK BOARD SEAT

Park Commissioner, Allan De Genova should immediately resign his park board seat, considering he was elected as an NPA Commissioner, briefly sat as an Independent and has now switched parties and belongs to Vision.

While there is no legal requirement to resign seats when switching parties, voters are clearly not happy when elected officials do the political-party-hop, without seeking a new mandate from them. This became very clear when David Emerson switched from Liberal to Conservative and Belinda Stronach changed from Conservative to Liberal.

While, Mr. De Genova was suspended from his NPA party, he was provided opportunity to re-join. He chose not to and announced he was going to sit as a political independent until the next election in 2008.

Just a few days ago, Mr De Genova announced he has joined the Vision municipal party and will be running as the Vision Mayoral candidate. He is actively selling Vision memberships.

It seems Mr. De Genova has created a political predicament for himself. He is no longer an Independent and it can be construed that he mislead the public when he previously announced he would sit as an Independent until the November 2008 municipal election. Voters did not elect him as a Vision elected representative and that is what he now is. One cannot be both an Independent and Vision representative.

Commissioner De Genova also has another political quandary and this is also quite serious.

The public will be questioning whenever Mr. De Genova votes on a park board matter from now until November, 2008, whether his voting is shifting due to Mayoral considerations. I posed the above question to COPE Park Commissioner, Spencer Herbert, who has worked cooperatively with Mr. De Genova and is on friendly terms.

Mr. Herbert states, "in an election year, which we are in, everyone has to look more closely at campaigning politicians. We should all be placed under greater scrutiny and the comment about Mr. De Genova is fair comment".

Mr. De Genova's some time back presented a political viewpoint that NPA Parks Commissioner Heather Holden, was in conflict of interest due to her being an employee with the Vancouver Aquarium, who has a lease with the Park Board. Mr De Genova believed her conflict was a result that she may have other political considerations besides park board, considering her job.

So will Mr. De Genova, who is supposed to be a man of integrity, now do the same as he requested of Ms Holden since, as a result of his Mayoral announcement, he has other considerations, besides the ones related to his job on parks board?Jamie Lee Hamiltontricia_foxx@yahoo.com

2 Comments:

I'm writing in to clear up some confusion. When we spoke I said "I do not agree with you that Allan De Genova should resign his Park Board seat". I know you have not written that I do agree with your view point, but some have told me they think the column reads that way. Thank you for giving me this chance to clear up any confusion, and for your passion for community service,

Well, I stated you are on good terms with Commissioner De Genova and work cooperatively with him. I wanted my readers to see this. Moreover, I never implied that you thought he should resign. In fact you stated and which I agree that all politicians should be placed under greater scrutiny during a campaign year. I put this in.

You stated that my comment to you was a fair one and that is all I printed. To me, it does not suggest that you support the call for him to resign.In fact all you said was that my comment was a fair one.

I understand that people can read into my posting all they want but I was clear that it was only my opinion that he should resign.